The Evolving Newsroom

Next week’s a doosy at Wintec because we’ve got two very interesting people coming to speak to students: financial journalist Bernard Hickey and China’s first blogger, Isaac Mao.

Bernard Hickey, editor of interest.co.nz, has caught a fair amount of attention for the way he tirelessly promotes the site through his blog, Twitter and beyond. He has some clear views on why old media isn’t succeeding online and how to create new media companies that will. He has a few golden rules, among them: Google is God, Community is King,  Donate the Stories and sell the Data. Not everyone subscribes to Bernard’s views – on the economy or on the media – but there’s no denying it takes a degree of courage to jump boots and all into a new business model and I always like to see innovation in action.

Because I want to find out more about interest.co.nz’s plan of attack, I’ve invited Bernard to be our guest speaker at a semi-regular event Wintec runs called Media Bites. We host it at the lovely Ferrybank Reception centre on the Waikato River on a Tuesday from 12pm to 2pm, and the idea is for the guest speaker to give us food for thought while we work our way through a free lunch provided courtesy of our sponsor, the National Business Review.

Previous guests have included Carly Flynn, the BBC’s Tama Muru, Morning Report stalwart Sean Plunket, former Dom-Post editor Tim Pankhurst, Country Calendar exec producer Frank Torley and many more. The audience includes Wintec journalism students, tutors, local journalists, PRs, councillors and interested industry folk of various stripes.

This time we have the added bonus of Isaac Mao joining us. Isaac set up the first blog in China, once wrote an open letter to Google asking it to unblock the web for Chinese users, and these days focuses on free speech and using social media to connect people across China and between China and the rest of the world. Isaac will be making a guest splash at Media Bites.

Isaac will also be leading a session with students earlier in the day in the Hub events room at Wintec, talking about social media, new media and whatever else comes up in questions. Bernard will be there too to answer questions and talk about what the future might look like for graduating journalism students.

We have room for a few more people at both events, so if you’re in the Waikato on Tuesday and would like to drop in to the Hub at Wintec at 10.30am, or join us for a free lunch at 12pm at Ferrybank, drop a line to julie DOT starr AT wintec.ac.nz.